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(5^^c^/^S3 







^1'= THE FUTURE 



COLORED UACE IN AMERICA: 



AN ARTICLE IN THE 



Ircsbgtcrunt ^uitttcrlu Ictrtftii, 



OF JXJJl.^X', 1862. 



BY WILLIAM AIKMAN, 

Pastor of the Hauover Street Preihjierlati Church, Wllinl/vjtoa, DeUwin 




NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH 

No. 683 BROADWAY. 
1862. 



Edwfti-d O. Jenkins. Printer, gO North Williain Street, N. Y. 




S; 



THE FUTURE 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA: 



AN ARTICLE IN THE 



Iresbiiteriait (Jjitarierig llctiiclU; 



OF JTJL.Y, 186S. 



BY WILLIAM AIKMAN, 

Pastor of the Hanover Street Presbyterian Church, Wilmington, Delaivare 



NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH 

No. 683 BROADWAY. 
1863. 






IN EXCHANfGB 
Mr 3 wo 



EDWARD O. JENKINS, 

printer ann 5 trrcotsptr, 
No. 20 NoRTu William St. 



THE 



FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE 

IN AMERICA. 



In whatever way the present civil war in America shall re- 
sult, it is certain that the future condition of the colored race 
in this country will be the question over-mastering all others 
for many years to come. It has already pushed itself into the 
foremost place. However it may he true, that slavery and the 
negro were not the proximate causes of this war, no one who 
gives any candid thought to the matter can fail to recognize 
the fact, that back of all, this stands as the grand first occasion 
of it. Had there been no slavery, there would have been no war. 
General Jackson was only partly right when he said, that while 
in his day the tariJEf was made the pretext of secession, and that 
by and by slavery would take its place, but that neither would 
be the true motive of disunion ; that a desire for a separate con- 
federacy was the final cause. This was evidently correct, yet 
had slavery not stood in this country there would not have 
come into being that peculiar state of society which now lives 
in the Southern States, and which demands for its -very exist- 
ence that it should rule alone. Slavery has created an aristo- 
cracy, not of numbers, but of wealth and power, which bears 
with it all the social forces. While the slaveholders are but 
a very small minority of the whole people, yet by the force of 
their wealth and the fact of their being slave owners, they 



4: FUTURE OF TUE 

bold all the political j)ower, and indeed, sweep out of existence 
any opposition. There are, with very rare exceptions throngh- 
out the whole Sonth, but two classes — free and slave, or we 
may say, slave-holders and slaves, for the non slave-holders 
are completely lost and absorbed in the all-controlling clement 
which is above them ; they work in with it, and are indeed a 
part of it. As slavery called this aristocracy into being, and 
created its power, so it holds it in being; anything which 
strikes at slavery strikes at the root of this power ; to destroy 
slavery would be to blot it out of existence. 

Ai-ound this point the whole contest is waged, and from it 
alone every movement is to be interpreted. In the days of 
South Carolina nullification the tariff was indeed the pretext of 
rebellion, and the true motive was a separate government and 
the perpetuation of the power of the dominant class, but this 
power depended wholly upon the status of slavery, and so, back 
of all slavery was, even then, the thought, and to strengthen 
slaveiy the great end. In this we find the accurate explanation 
of the studied and persistent efforts to extend and perpetuate 
it, not because it is admired in itself, or because it is seen to be 
politically or socially beneficial, but because it is the corner- 
stone of a valued social state. A friend, some years ago sail- 
ing down the Potomac, was engaged in conversation with the 
captain of the boat, a blunt, bluff Southerner, and looking over 
the beautiful scenery on either side of the river, said, "Why 
do you Virginians hold on to slavery? it is a thousand pities 
that such a country as this should be so poorly used." '' I 
know it," replied the captain, "slavery does ruin the state ; but 
the fact is, we like it ; a man feels good when ho owns twenty 
or fifty negroes, and can say to one go, and he goes, and to 
another come, and he comes." Here the whole philosophy of 
the social state of the South is in a nut-shell. To abandon 
slavery is to abandon a position which has been held as a tenure 
of nobility for two hundred years. Nothing but the direst 
necessity will bring it about. It will never be given voluntarily 
up ; the whole force of human nature is against its relinquish- 
ment. As M-ell might the nobility of England be expected to 
throw up their titles and their coronets on persuasion. Here is 
a case where argument has no power. You may exhaust it, you 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 6 

may prove slavery to be wrong morally, wrong socially,_wrong 
politically, yoa may prove it to a demonstration that it is an 
economic blunder of the most gigantic proportions you may 
make it clear as sunlight that it is demoralizing and rmnous 
but YOU have done absolutely nothing toward its abolishment. 
Here and there a truly conscientious man or woman, under 
the great pressure of duty, will consent to the liberation ot 
theirslaves ; but the public conscience is so ethereal a thing 
that it can be touched by no appeals of duty or obbga ion 
and will never force a community up to any great work, least 
of all to such a work as this. • i • 

■ The effect of emancipating one's slaves upon the social posi- 
tion of the master, has been seen over and over again ; the hour 
when the bonds are broken and freedom is given is the hour 
when all the former associations are given up ; expatriation and 
banishment are the inevitable results. The generous, or the 
conscientious emancipator at once becomes an exile ; he has 
sunk at once out of an aristocracy whose titular power he gave 
,,p the moment he ceased to be a slave-holder, and he cannot 

comfortably abide in even his old home. H^^/V^^^.'^l^^tT 
tion of the vast and unexpected power put forth by thisrebeb 
lion, of the unconqucred will, of the enormous sacrifices en- 
dured: here is the explanation of the seeming insanity ot the 
stru^cle, of the unwarrantableness of its acts, of the demoniac 
fiercc;:iess of its rage, and the diabolical malignity and cruelty 
of its method of war ; it is the death struggle ot a great socia 
element, for which to be conquered is to be ruined and swept 

out of existence. ^ , 

No man understood this so well or so soon as the gieatl^ul- 
lifier He was a thinker and a philosopher, and so with great 
logicd consistency he became the early aiithor of the doctrme 
of slavery as now almost universally held at the South. He 
startled and shocked the men of his time by his bold positions 
in respect to that institution, and was far m advance of his 
time in his assertions of its inherent rightfulness, and the de- 
termination not only not to terminate, but to extend, Btrengthen 
and perpetuate it. He was a nullifier because a Blave-holde 
in p inciple. The one grew out of, and was a part ot the 
other The maintenance of an oligarchy was the ultimate 



PUTtlRE OF THE 



end, that rested on slfivery, and so " state rights " so called, 
and tlic divine right of slavery went hand in hand. 

This is strikingly evident in the history of the present war. 
The rapid rise, and tlie culmination of rebellion in act, was pre- 
ceded by the new annunciation of these doctrines of Calhoun on 
slavery. We remember well how strange it sounded, and how 
startling in the General Assembly of only 1856, when slavery 
was declared an institution not needing to be defended or apo- 
logized for, but to be praised and justified as truly an ordinance 
of God as marriage, or the filial relation. Tlie churcli had 
known no such doctrine before, and then spued it out of her 
mouth, but it was gravely held and fiercely and impudently 
avowed. It was followed by secession as a logical consequence. 
It is very remarkable how rapid was the change in {)ul)lic sen- 
timent. This new docti-inc of the rightfulness of slavery swept 
over the whole Southern States in a few months, politicians, 
philanthropists, ministers, suddenly starting up to find that 
they had been all along in error in thinking that slavery was 
an evil, and hoping that some day it would be removed, that 
the}' had been wi-ongin speaking of being " opposed to slavery 
in the abstract," it was abstractly not wrong, but right; they 
liad been mistaken when regretting the circumstances which 
made emancipation difiicult ; these were not to be regretted at 
all, for emancipation ought not to be desired. This change of 
sentiment and doctrine was not gradual, but sudden ; it went 
with telegraphic speed. The reason was that events were pre?* 
sing upon the aristocracy of the South and threatening its de* 
struction. Slavery had ceased to be a dominant power in the 
Federal legislation, and the social state which rested upon it 
was trembling to its foundation. There was but one thing to 
be done, and that was the setting up of a new government, the 
corner-stone of which should be slavery. And this was not ac- 
cidental or capricious, but simply a necessity. The state of so- 
ciety which was sought to be maintained had its origin inslavcr}'-, 
and slavery could not but be put in the foremost place. Alex- 
ander Stephens understood both himself and the nuitter which 
he had in hand when he told the people and the world that they 
had not hitherto understood this thing. Before, they had 
sought to maintain their social state and only tolerate slavery, 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 7 

they had not seen that all depended on it ; here %vas the true 
corner-stone which former builders had rejected, but which 
they were now making the head of the corner. The secession 
was a foregone conclusion long enough before it actually 
occurred : it was so understood throughout the South by 
thinking men, and the sudden spread of the new doctrine on 
slavery was the necessary preparation for it. 

He, then, who does ilot take slavery into the account in his 
thinking on this war, has not begun to get a glimpse of what it 
means ; he who leaves it out in the settlement of it, will not ad- 
vance a step. Its origin was in slavery, its issue is to be found 
only as it is connected with slavery. There may be, as there 
has been, through the tremendous power of a vast prejudice, a 
thousand endeavors to avoid the issue, but events will sooner or 
later compel every man, whether he will or not, to look it in the 
face. We say prejudice, for in this thing, as in all history has 
been the case, a name has become a well nigh boundless power. 
The interest of slavery has for a long course of years, and by 
a persistent endeavor, created a term of terrible significance, 
and has wielded it with prodigious force,— we mean the word 
" Abolitionist." History has known before a term made a 
watch-word and changing a dynasty, but never was a word 
brandished with such effect upon a nation's well-being as this. 
Time was when South as well asKorth, to be " an abolitionist," 
a " member of the Abolition Society," was not only no strange 
thing, but a position held by the foremost men, and without a 
thought that they were amenable to even the slightest censure 
of their associate! Jefferson and Pinckney, as well^ as Jay and 
Adams, were abolitionists in name, as well as in fact. Dela- 
ware, and Maryland, and Virginia had their Abolition Socie- 
ties, and the best and greatest men were members of theni. 
But in the course of years Slavery changed all that. The oli- 
garchy awakened to the danger which threatened it, and at first 
gradually, and then by more and more open effort, these socie. 
ties were assailed or suppressed, till they with the death of the 
great men wlio founded them, passed out of existence, no one 
perhaps knowing precisely how. Then began the Storm of 
abuse and anathematizing directed against all wlio dared to 
hold, or at least utter sentiments opposed to slavery. " Aboli- 



8 FUTURE OF THE 

tion " and " abolitionist"' was echoed and liowled till men be- 
came pale at the bare sound, and considered it the last and 
most dreaded terror to be called by the hated name. 

But a change vastly more rapid in its movement is now 
taking place in an opposite direction, the significance of which 
we have but just begun to measure. The mind of the whole na- 
tion has been directed now for one year, with great steadiness, 
to the contemplation of slavery from' an entirely new stand- 
point, and divested of the cloud of prejudice which has for 
nearly a century, been thrown over it. Tlie M'ord abolitionist 
has lost its secret potency. 

In this line of thought the present attitude of our government 
is of immeasurable importance. We are as likely to undervalue 
as to overestimate events which occur just beneath our eye. 
A few weeks since President Lincoln sent quietly into the 
houses of Congress a message of strangely straightforward 
character, clothed in very plain and homely garb, but of 
meaning not be misunderstood, and admitting of no miscon- 
struction. It asked that Congress should simply resolve that 
the government was willing to lend its aid to any State of the 
Union which should desire to bring slaver}- to an end. That 
was all. But that sim])le message marked an era in the history 
of the world, and will be looked back u{)on in all future time 
as one of the grand events of this century. It was unlooked 
for, sudden, so that the country stood confounded for the mo- 
ment, but the next was ready to adopt it. It quickly became 
the policy of the government and of the people, without, so far 
as we know, a single voice of moment raised against it. The 
])cople have not yet begun to understand all its great meaning. 
What is it? It is that the government of these United States 
deems slavery an evil, wis/ies it to cease, and will do what it can 
to help it to an end. It is the Hrst time in all our history that 
this was true. The government has never so spoken before. 
Henceforth its policy is to hel^) emancipation. It is a risen 
sun, it has brought a day whose glorious light we liave not 
yet appreciated. Hereafter all its patrouage, and power, and 
prestige-will be thrown on the side of freedom, and no man 
can accurately measure the result. 

The President has, by this great act of his, lifted the moral 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 9 

sense of the nation to a position to M-hich years could not other- 
wise liave brought it. It was one of tliose strokes of God-in- 
spired genius which once in a century or so, changes the face of 
the world. Like many other acts of this truly great man, it 
was wonderfully timely, put forth at the moment, the fulness of 
time, it was not too soon, it was not too late. The sense and 
the thought of the people needed to be advanced up to its re- 
ception and had not wildly gone beyond the point of wisdom, 
the moment with a deep intuition was recognized, seized upon, 
and by a few words talismanic, the forming elements were crys- 
tallized. So they will remain. For all the coming time this 
people will look forward to the abolition of slavery. Freedom 
is the American watch-word, freedom for all men. 

But a few weeks have gone, yet the change is wonderful 
already. The atmosphere is clearer and purer. The writer of 
this is living in a slave state, and is able to mark the changes 
better than those in places more remote from the influences of 
slavery. While a few months since no prominent men or class 
of men would venture to plant themselves openly on the plat- 
form of emancipation, now there is a great party forming in this 
state, (Dehiware,) and at the coming elections in the autumn 
of this year, it will go into the canvass with Emancipation for 
its watch-word. The stigma which slavery has succeeded in 
attaching to the word " abolition " is already passing away, 
and it is no longer dangerous to one's reputation to be con- 
sidered an emancipationist. 

What is true in a slave state will be as true everywhere in 
the land. The presidential word has brushed away a world of 
sophisms, and settled a thousand pleas against dealing with 
slavery; it has declared not only expedient, but possible, im- 
mediate emancipation. The abolition of slavery in the District 
of Columbia following so quickly upon the message of the 
President, and the adoption by Congress of its recommenda- 
tion, have made its words facts and demonstrations. Slavery 
has been aholished with a tcord, and in a momenty over a whole 
district of country — here is a fact to make the ages sing over in 
this land. We do not even think of the fifteen hundred or so 
captives set free ; they are as nothing ; except as occasions for 
the bringing into existence the momentous and glorious fact 



10 FUTURE OF TDE 

tliat this government is on the side of freedom, and its strength 
■will be given to it henceforth. It is difiicnlt to measure the 
import of all this, even as it is difficult to foresee the SM'eep of 
a mighty current -which has just begun to rush in a new chan- 
nel; that it is destined to sweep slavery from this country, no 
one now can have a doubt. 

Hereafter the thinlving on the subject of American Slavery 
will 1)0 oidy in one line — how shall it be done away? If we 
■would have an understanding where a few weeks may advance 
us, we have only to remember what was the point of thought in 
relation to this matter. It was, how shall slavery be kept from 
extendine: itself? We were content to let it live if it did not 
subjugate other lands, but the events liave crowded us far be- 
yond that, we have gotten past a thought of it, no living man 
fears now, or even dreams of it, it has simply gone forever out 
of a sane !nan's mind. What an advance a year has made ! 
We have been hurried past the place of argument against 
slavery. We are done with all that ; the books and the pam- 
phlets, the documents and the statistics are growing quickly 
obsolete, for they have done their work ; we need 7iot be care- 
ful of them for our future use. AVe shall not need them except 
as relics of a well fought field. 

Those of ns who have for a life-time been doing what we 
could to hasten forward this day, who have spoken and written 
and suffered for it, in the new atmosjihei'c which we bi-eathe are 
like men that dream. We knew that it would come, we hoped 
to live lono- enouo-h to see the dav. We see it and are glad, we 
did not think to see it so soon, it has come so suddenly, it 
shines so broadly and with so rich a promise that we recognize 
it as God's day ; we see his wonder-working poAver moving 
marvellously, making — was it ever shown so before? — the 
wrath of man to praise him ; we behold how God has taken 
tlie work into his own hand ; how he has made slavery destroy 
itself. More than human wisdom, and beyond human guid- 
ance is here, the thick night would not have gone so won- 
drously had He not rolled it away — we hail the light. This is 
the day the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. 

But like all of God's gifts, it demands work and gives re- 
sponsibility, responsibility and work proportionate to the boon. 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 11 

He has given us a day, but it brings witli it a work of which pei-- 
haps we have gotten only a mere glimpse. It is well that we 
should endeavour to understand and appreciate what that work 
is, for it is no lioliday tliat He lias given us. We have asked 
in many a prayer tliat it might come, and having qome we must 
see what is to be done, and manfully deal with it. 

It is easy to talk of emancipation, but he has thought loosely 
and ill v/ho sees no great difficulties in bringing it to a happy 
issue ; who has not questions arise in his mind to give him pause 
when he contemplates a social change so vast in the state of a 
race of twelve millions of men. Let not the reader suppose a 
mistake in the figures, we mean twelve millions and not four-; 
there are, indeed, four millions of slaves to be made free, but 
a change is to be wrought in the social state of the eight mil- 
lions of the whites, which is only less than that of the blacks. 
■ To alter radically, to remodel the whole social fabric of a great 
and numerous people, to shift the foundation stones, remove 
them, and place others in their places, without racking the 
edifice or tumbling it in a hideous ruin, is the v/ork of no inex- 
perienced or careless architect. 

The gigantic war which has been desolating one half of this 
land, has been, as we have said, simply the mighty, frantic efifort 
of a social state to establish itself; of a peculiar civilization to 
consolidate its power. The result of the war will be the total 
defeat of this attempt ; the very endeavor, the waging of the 
war has shaken its foundation, its end v.'ill remove it entirely. 
This civilization, whose basis is slavery, has chosen to risk its 
existence on the issue of this war : it must accept the alternative 
which it has raised, and be content to pass away. 

The war will decide the q uestion of slavery, and with it alter 
the whole form of society at the South which rests upon it. 
But one civilization cannot pass av/ay and leave a vacuum ; one 
state of society cannot cease and have no other in its place. 
It is only changes, not new creations which take place in the 
social world ; one civilization gives place to another; society 
passes from one state into another. "We are, then, on the evo 
of a mighty change, perhaps the greatest ever seen in the world 
before. That it can or could take place without an awful strug- 
gle, pangs which are the birth-throes of a nation, let no one 



12 FUTURE OF THE 

imagine ; that it will Lc clone in a few brief months is im- 
possible. "While we write, victories have just been gained, the 
great city of the South has passed into the hands of our army, 
and men begin to predict the speedy downfall of the rebellion ; 
but, alas, we cannot felicitate ourselves >vith any such prospect. 
The great class which has made the M^ar to maintain its exist- 
ence, will not consent to die thus ; every element of human na- 
ture in its fallen form is against it. It will yield to nothing 
but simply irresistible force, it will die only as it is killed. We 
confess, as we look over the whole ground and weigh well as 
we can the origin and causes of this gigantic war, to a feeling, 
not of despondency or uncertainty, for we believe that God 
will one day bring it to a happy end, but of heart-sorrow and 
care, even as a woman has sorrow and foreboding at the inevi- 
table agony ei"c a man is born into the world. To lift twelve 
milliois of men to a new and better place, to open before them 
a good and happy futui-e, instead of certain prospective woe 
and final dissolution, is a work worth the tears and groans of a 
nation, and they can well afford to be patient till the time has 
come. At present let no one's heart f^iil him if the horizon 
grows dark and hope seems at times blotted out ; let him re- 
member well what the meaning of the strife is, that it is no ac- 
cident, but the death-struggle of a civilization two hundred 
years old, and based on all tlie worst and strongest elements of 
human nature. It can have no easy death. 

Taking it for granted, then, that a great change is about to 
take place in the social state of the South, and taking it for 
granted that slavery on which it is based must, under the pres- 
sure of the forces which are bearing ii})on it, pass sooner or 
later away, a point which wc are not disposed just now to con- 
sider even debatable, a great question comes up, What shallhe 
the future condition of the colored race in this land f How 
shall the })roblem be solved ? What shall be done with the 
slave ? Hasty and inconsiderate persons may find ready an- 
swers, but it seems to us that just now there is no question of so 
great intricacy, and certainly no one of equal moment to which 
an American can address himself. We propose in the remainder 
of this article to discuss it. It is not a subject on which it is 
well to dogmatize ; we have learned that there is room for a 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 13 

very wide diversity of opinion ; the most that any one can hope 
to do IS by discussion to endeavor to elicit light. After all the 
Providence of God will do the work ; it is for us to be abreast 
ot that Providence, ready to accept the trust and do the work 
which it assigns us. 

We have dwelt thus long on the causes, and what we consi- 
der to be the true meaning of the war, because only by a rio-ht 
apprehension of them can we be ]>re]3ared to deal with this great 
question. Those who are at the head of the government appre- 
ciate It most fully, and the President in his message frankly 
intimates that the only true hope of a lasting settlement of our 
national difficulties must be found in the ultimate emancipation 
of the blacks. Put aware of the objections which must arise to 
the setting free of four millions of slaves and their remaining 
in the country, he proposes that a system of colonization shall 
be inaugurated by which they may be removed. Emancipa- 
tion witli colonization in lands provided for the freed slaves, is 
the scheme. 

Without dealing with this i)roposition of the President in de- 
tail, let us look at the state of the case, and ask, Is coloniza- 
tion possible; and if possible, is it necessary, or even desirable? 
By colonization we mean, of course, the removal or deportation 
of the blacks to another country. We do not mean emigra- 
tion ; that is an entirely diflerent thing. 

We may ask at the outset, Have we a right to send out of 
the country the emancipated slaves ? However it may have 
failed to be his country, this is his home, and by what' law of 
morality shall you compel him to abandon not only his, but his 
father's and his ancestor's home ? It is his by a line of descent 
stretching, in most cases, tar back of theirs who talk so glibly 
of his colonization : and after, by a great act of justice, you 
have raised him from chattelhood into citizenship, and have 
given him a country, by what rule of right do you propose at 
the same time to banish him from it ? A right-minded man will 
hesitate before he leaves the feelings of four millions of hearts 
out of his calculations. It is, we think, an element somewhat 
to be considered, and yet one utterly ignored by the most of 
those who talk on this subject. If it be answered, the coloni- 
zation is to be voluntary, they only going who choose to go, we 



14 FUTURE OF THE 

have Qnlj to say that that is not the time meaning of the term, 
nor what is by common consent understood by it. It' merely 
emigration is intended, and it is made no part ot" the scheme 
of emancipation, the case is altered radically. But of this 
more by and by. 

Of the jjossihililf/ of the deportation of the freedmen, a 
thoughtful man will have many doubts. The shipment of the 
natural increase for one year of our present slave population, 
sixty thousand, (60,000,) would tax the energies and resources 
of the nation to an extent which they who talk of it have not 
very fully measured. And then the original 4,000,000 remain. 
To those who have been accustomed to advocate the I'cmoval of 
the colored race from this country, we recommend a matter-of- 
fact calculation in ships and money and time. It will be both 
interesting and profitable ; possibly it will impart some new 
ideas on the matter. For ourselves, we may say that we deem 
the proposition for the deportation of a race of four millions, 
with a yearly increase of sixty thousand, a wild dream, one of 
the emptiest that a sane man cares to entertain. The history 
of the race has never known such a thing ; it has seen the emi- 
gration of millions, but the seiiding of them never. 

But passing this, is the colonization of the colored race in 
this country desirable or necessary? For the entering npon a 
work so gigantic, even were it possible, there ought to be rea- 
sons the most imperative, absolute, and pressing. Mere opin- 
ions, theories, or prejudices, will not be sufficient ; the demand 
for it must be made to ap])ear with sunlight clearness. 

What are these reasons i To ns it does not seem easy to 
exhibit them. It is easy to declaim about the inferiority of the 
race, the impossibility of their ever living on an equality with 
the white race, their lack of ability to support themselves, and 
the like, but in the end it is very difficult to perceive the logi- 
cal consecutiveness of the argument. The inferiority of a race 
can hardly be shown to be a valid reason for its banishment 
from the presence of the superior, and by its power; tlie ina- 
bility' of a people to care for or to elevate themselves, does not 
seem a i)recisely good ai'gunient for sending them to a new land, 
and to a naked dependence on their own resources ; the invin- 
cible prejudice of the white docs not at once give a very 



COLORED EACE IN AMERICA. 15 

potent, at least a very just reason why the black should be 
expatriated. 

We will not assert it, but there is good cause to suspect that 
while in the minds of perhaps the majority of those who for 
a few yeai-s ])ast have been active supporters of the coloniza- 
tion scheme, the good of the black and of Africa have been 
prominent motives, yet it had its birth and its chief support 
in the way in which it bore upon the interests of slavery. The 
presence of free blacks among slaves is an element of weak- 
ness in the system, and though it may not have been openly 
avowed, yet there is too much reason to suspect that coloniza- 
tion was intended vastly more for them than for freed slaves. 
It was a scheme to strengthen slavery, and it ceased to elicit 
sympathy or generous support so soon as it appeared to give 
no promise of that result. 

Asking the reasons for colonization, we apprehend that when 
the argument is pressed, it will be found to terminate, if on 
anything substantial, upon the benefit which it will confer on 
the black race. Without volunteering the details of that ar- 
gument, which, indeed, we do not profess to see clearly, we 
may say that there is at least a preliminary question, whether 
or not that end cannot be better attained without colonization 
than with it? Is it not possible better to elevate and do good 
to the colored race in this than in any other land to which 
they may be sent? 

But we are writing coolly, as if this were an open question 
whether the four millions of blacks are to remain for many 
years to come in this country or not. It is no open question. 
They are here, and here they must remain for a period which 
no man is competent to limit, even in his argument. They 
cannot, or to speak mildly, they will not be transported across 
the sea or to any foreign land. They may eventually, as we 
shall endeavor to suggest, go, but they cannot be sent away. 
In this assertion, we leave the inclinations and the will of the 
black man out of the question. There are reasons which must 
operate on the side of the white to make it inqiossible. The 
colored race is necessary, and will be so for a period indefin- 
itely long, to the southern country. It constitutes its labor ; 
it is the productive force of that land ; it has been for the past 
two hundred years. It is the foundation element of the whole 



16 FUTURE OF THE 

social state. Now by what power shall there be a speedy re- 
moval of the whole labor of a country ? How shall the entire 
producing element be suddenly abstracted ? Were tliat pos- 
sible to be done, the whole state would plunge at once into 
poverty and ruin. Once or twice the experiment has been 
tried, in historic times, of banishing or destroying a producing 
element of a state, and though done on a comparatively small 
scale, the results are sufficiently marked to teach all after time. 
Spain did it when she drove the Moors from her Castilian 
lands. France did it when she murdered and banished the 
Huguenots, and they both have scarcely, after two and three 
centuries, recovered from the shock and the ruin. 

But we need not spend our space in discussing the point. 
However any one may deem the colonization of the whole 
colored race desirable, still it will remain an impossibility ; 
there are natural and economic forces which would be omnipo- 
tent to prevent it. They are needed here, and where a race 
is needed, tlicre, in this age of the world, it will abide. There 
is work to be done ; they can do it, they have done it ; there 
is no one else at present to take their place, and so a power 
above wishes, prejudice, or argument, holds them here — the 
power of an economic necessity. 

The colored race is here, here for a long time it will remain ; 
it will not — the events bewildering us by their ra])id march all 
point one way — it will not remain in slavery ; it will and must 
by-and-by be free. We, as an Amei'ican people, must accept 
this double truth with all its difficulties and perplexities; we 
must like men, in God's fear and with many a cry for his help, 
bravely deal with it. We need not now go back and stand sigh- 
ing over the past, and mourning that we did not a century ago 
meet it and escape the mighty work and sorrow of to-day ; we 
cannot put it away an}' longer; the great questions rise up 
before us with a menace upon their brow ; they demand and 
they will have an answer now to-day. No scheme of depor- 
tation or colonization shall open any easy door of escape ; let 
no man console himself that the question of emancipation is to 
be solved l)y any such short and simple process ; liere on this 
continent, witliin tiie bordei's of these States, slavery has done 
its work, and just here freedom is to have her greatest and 
most glorious triumph. This American State has given some 



COLORED RACE Ilf AMERICA. 17 

examples to history, it has given some demonstrations of the 
power of free institutions for the white, it is giving to-day its 
most memorable, and is it too much to hope that it will yet 
give to the world a more glorious, because more difticult, de- 
monstration of the same power in the black race ? What if 
it should remain, for it, after having completed its work for 
the one, it should crowm it in the other, by lifting it from 
deepest slavery, and by self-sacrifice and toil make it a bles- 
sing to the world ! So we believe it will yet be. The way is 
not clear now ; the people do not see their work ; but by-and- 
by it will of itself be before them, and they will address them- 
selves to it, bringing every quickened power Avhich marks 
them among the nations, and, under God, they will complete it. 
How it shall be done we do not feel competent to intimate, 
and it was not the purpose of this paper to attempt to indicate. 
No man, perhaps, is sufficient for that. The Providence of 
God we believe will mark the path, and events will huny us 
if we be ready to follow them in the right line of the work. 

There are some things, however, which may be said that 
may possibly cast some light upon the supposed difficulties of 
the matter of emancipation without colonization. These diffi- 
culties, we think, arise in many cases from a mistaken estimate 
of the negro character and capabilities. 

It is not our design to enter upon the question of the in- 
feriority of the race or the impossibility of its ever living on 
an equalit}^ with the white ; while we are not ready to grant 
the first, certainly not to the extent to which it is pushed, we 
are disposed to believe the latter. It is doubtful, we are in- 
clined to believe it impossible, that the two races can ever on 
this continent abide on terms of social equality. We are too, 
inclined to believe that this country is not to be the ultimate 
home of the colored race. It will go out from it. We think 
that there is that in the character of the African race which ' 
makes this probable, perhaps certain. In the strange work- 
ings of Divine Providence this race has in a marvellous 
manner been brought to this laud, and put under a tutelage 
for a great future, and that Africa, its home, may become the 
recipient of blessings, the foundation and preparation for 
which were made in this country. The bondage of the Israel- ' 
2 



18 FUTURE OF THE 

ites in Egypt was not an accident, but a divinely ordered proced- 
ure, which had a striking bearing upon the character of the Jew 
and shaped his wliole after history. It was a work of preparation, 
and it was not done in a short time, but took two or three cen- 
turies to be brought to perfection. American slavery, like this 
Egyptian bondage, will have its results on the future of Africa. 

In saying this, of coui-se no reader will suppose that there 
is in the thought a justification of slavery, any more than 
when speaking of the great benefits which flowed from the 
bondage in Egypt to the Jew, we justify the selling of Joseph, 
or the tyranny of Pharaoh. It is God's wonderful work to 
bring the greatest good out of the dee})est evils; the Fall to 
issue in Redemption. 

It is impossible to discuss the future of the black people in 
this country without immediately being brought into contact 
with the future of Africa. The one is closely connected with 
the other. The movements of Providence are synchronous. 
How wonderfully events are ])repared in distant places, that 
they may be brought together at the appointed moment ! The 
fact that at just the time when the great and absorbing ques- 
tions which relate to this people in our own land are forcing 
themselves upon our attention, the continent of Africa is at- 
tracting more of interest in the wav of discovery and travel 
than any other portion of the earth, has, we think, a meaning. 

Geographical research has almost exhausted other lands, 
while here almost a continent, at least till within a few years, 
has remained unexplored. This has not been because no efforts 
have been made to breakthrough the thick veil that has always 
hung over it. Travellers have been unceasing in their at- 
tempts to penetrate into the interior, and have tailed, not from 
want of energy, but because of the insuperable difficulties in 
the way. If they have succeeded in reaching the shores, they 
have died under the fatal coast fever. If they have escaped this 
death, and pressed towards the interior, it has been oidy to fall 
victims to savage beasts or more savage men. So that African 
exploration has been, until perhaps within the last fifteen years, 
a history of melancholy disaster and sacrifice of valuable life. 

Of late, new and marked success has crowned the efforts 
made to lay open this continent to the knowledge of the world. 



COLORED HACE IN. AMERICA. 19 

Whiit has been accomplished will strike with surprise any one 
whose attention has not before been called to the facts of the 
case. Let the reader take a well prepared map of to-daj and 
compare it with that from which he studied his lessons a' score 
of years ago. He will remember how simple and easy to be 
remembered was the information to be conveyed by that wide 
and lightly-colored track which bore the words, " Unexplored 
Regions^ It embraced the lai-gest portion of the whole conti- 
nent. But this has been encroaclied upon year after vear on 
the South by Livingstone and Gumming, on the ISTorth by Barth, 
on the East by Barton, and on the West by Wilson and Du 
Chailhi, until the discoveries have almost touched each other. 
Wide stretches of thousands of miles, given up hitherto in the 
thoughts of men to perpetual desolation and drought, have been 
shown to hold vast inland seas, deep navigable rivers, and to be 
teeming with animal life, populous with men and fruitful of all 
the products of tro])ical luxuriance. So Africa begins to be 
known ; by-and-by it will be opened up, made ready, we think, 
to link its history with a people on the other side of the ocean. 

Leaving the point as proved, that tlie blacks ai-e to remain, 
at least for an indefinite period in this country, (we do not say 
that it will be forever, but of this we shall speak in another 
place,) we naturally ask whether there is anything in the Afri- 
can character that is possible of future progress and elevation. 
We answer unhesitatingly, there are natural characteristics 
which will in a vfery marked and peculiar way be a means of 
their speedier rise. 

It has been the misfortune, if so we may call it, of the Afri- 
can continent and the African people, to present their worst 
and most repulsive aspects first. This is the case with the 
country. The coast to which the voyager comes, for the most 
part lies low, and everywhere in its teeming bottoms disease 
and death are lurking. If he escapes the one he never avoids 
the other. The "African Fever" on the West Coast is the cer- 
tain welcome of tlie new comer, the only question is whether ho 
will survive it. The incidental mention which the missionary 
traveller, Livingstone, makes of his thirty-seventh attack of 
fever, and Du Chaillu of his fiftieth, and the exhaustion of the 
last of fourteen ounces of quinine which he had taken on his 



20 FUTURE OF THE 

journey nre ominous of the inhospitable reception which the 
country o-ives. But as soon as the traveller passes inland he 
conies into an entirely different region. Towering mountains, 
snow-capped and Ibrcst-crowned rise before him, and down 
through their passes healtliful and bracing winds are blowing, 
wide cluimpaigns already full of uncultivated fruitfulness, or 
grass and bush-covered tracts, which nature seems to exult in 
filling with animal life, in its most beautiful, as well as gigantic 
and ferocious forms, everywhere appear. While at first it 
would seem as if here were a continent capable of doing little 
or nothing for the world, lit only to give, as in the past, a little 
indigo, ivory, and palm oil, borne on the backs of degraded na- 
tives to the coast, we find that it is in reality a continent already 
producing unassisted harvests of cotton and sugar, and some of 
the products most necessary to man, and only needing that de- 
velopment which Christian civilization can give, but has never 
given, to bring it into the closest sympathy, and for good, with 
the rest of the world. 

What is true of the African continent has been emphatically 
true of the people. The world has always seen the African race 
in its lowest form. This seems true as far back as Egyptian 
monumental times. One is struck, when looking at copies of 
ancient hieroglyphics, with the degraded type of negro feature 
which always appears when these captive people are deline- 
ated. The African race seems to have been fated to be always 
represented by a slave, and, as was inevitable, it has been 
judged by the example seen. But the researches of travellers 
liave, of late, compelled us to reverse many, if not all these 
conceptions. Africa, gives us, indeed, | erhaps the lowest types 
of humanity in the Bushman- or Hottentot, yet the explorations 
of travellers have also shown these are not the true and normal 
examples of the African stock. 

It can readily be seen that wherever the African character 

* Even these Bushmen seemed to have suffered in reputation from their observers. 
"Those who inhabit," says Livingstone, " the hot, sandy plains of the desert 
possess, generally, thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion, and severe privation. 
Many are of low stature, but not dwarlish ; the specimens brought to Europe have 
been selected, like coster-mongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; 
consequently Euglish ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way, as if the 
ugliest specimens of the English were exhibited in Africa as characteristic of the 
entire British nation." 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 21 

is measured by the standard of an African slave, the judgment 
must necessarily be an erroneous one. The best tribes are not, 
in the nature of tilings, those out of which slaves are made. 
The bolder, more energetic and intelligent are those who make 
slaves. War and conquest are the fruitful sources of slavery ! 
they have been in all ages, and in every country, and are so 
to-day in Africa. But the abler tribes are the "warriors and 
the conquerors, while the weaker and the lower are the cap- 
tives. Tlius at the outset the slave declares by the the fact 
of his servitude his inferiority of lineage. 

To this we are also to add the pretty Avell-known fact that 
the poorest of these captives are those who come into the hands 
of the slave-dealer on the coast, while the better made and the 
more intelh'gent are reserved for the service of their captors. 
Thus, with tin's further reduction, you have in the African as 
he comes to the slave-ship, the lowest specimen of an inferior 
type of his people. But just these have been the exponents of 
the African race, and it is not only not surprising, but entirely 
natural that a false estimate should have been made of the 
whole negro family. 

What we would infer, the explorations of recent travellers 
show to be actually the case. Within the limits of a single ar- 
ticle such as this, it is of course impossible to traverse the M'hole 
ground. We might, howevei-, refer to the CaiFres in the south, 
close upon the regions where the Hottentot is found, a race of 
stalwart and noble men, who have had skill and bravery enough 
to^ resist the power of the Dutch, and even to wage a deter- 
mined war with tlie English power itself. To the east of these, 
Dr. Lindlcy, one of the missionaries of the American Board of 
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, found tribes among whom 
he lived for a quarter of a century, and whom he describes as 
being physically inferior to no race, the men in some districts 
averaging nearly six feet in height. "They might be called 
stupid," says Livingstone, (p. 21,) speaking of Bakwains, a peo- 
ple with whom he Avas much associated in South Africa, in 
" matters which had not come within the sj^herc of their own 
observation, but in other things tkeysliowed more intelligence 
than is to be met with in our own uneducated peasantry." Two 
of the missionaries of the American Board, Messrs. Preston and 
Adams, speaking {Missionanj Herald, 1856,) of a visit to the 



>y 



22 FUTURE OF THE 

PangAvees, a very extensive tribe of people living just under the 
Equator and back from the coast, and who arc described by 
other Avritcrs as an every way superior race, tell us of natives 
whom they saw from i)laces still further inland " which wc had 
heard of, Ijut as yet had been unable to reach." "The variety," 
say they, "of complexion presented to us was quite an object 
of curiosity. Some were of a jet black, others with their braids 
of soft black hair, one and a half, or two feet in length, might 
be easily mistaken for quadroons." The Kew American ^n(?y- 
clqpedia treating of the Mandingoes, a West African race, 
says: "They are remarkable for their industry and energy 
The}' are mostly Mohammedans. The principal trade of that 
])art of West Africa which lies between the equator and the 
great desert is in their hands. They are not only active and 
shrewd merchants, but industrious agriculturists, and breeders 
of good stock of cattle, sheep and goats. Tiiey are black in 
color, tall, well-shaped, with regular features and wooly hair. 
In character the}' are amiable, hospitable, imaginative, credu- 
lous, truthful, fond of music, dancing and poetry. They are 
adventurous travellers, extending their commercial journeys 
over a greater part of Africa. The Mandingoes are the most 
Jiumerous race of West Africa, and have spread themselves to 
a great distance from their original seat, being found all over 
the valleys of the Gambia, Senegal and Niger." Such quota- 
tions and testimonies might be multiplied, were it necessary, 
but enough have been exhibited to demonstrate the fact that 
there are superior races of men in iVfrica, that these are even 
the characteristic races of the continent. Every new discovery 
exhibits this more clearly. The negro as he has been seen in 
the slave ti-ansported to other countries is no true type of the 
African man, but the continent is peopled by races capable 
ot' high attainments and indefinite civilization. 

Tliough the negro of this country may not be of the best 
I'aces of Africa, yet he is not of the worst, and as we shall have 
occasion to remark, he has had influences exerted, both as to 
I'ace ;m(l character which nnich more than compensate for any 
possible infei'iority of descent. Wc may fairly take the estimate 
of the native African as we find him at liis best estate at home, 
and build a })romise of the future of the African here upon it. 

The African character has its own marked and distinctive 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 23 

peculiarities. It is tropical. It has passion deep and perva- 
sive, slumbering witliin a rounded form and in deep dreamy 
eyes. It is ductile and plastic, ready to receive impressions and 
to be shapen by them. It does not possess the hard, aggres- 
sive features of the character of the tribes of Northern Europe ; 
it does not seek by conquest to extend its power, or to mould 
other people to its form. It is adapted to receive rather than 
to give. It is therefore esentially imitative. From this comes 
the rapidity with which under favorable influences, the Af- 
rican advances in civilization. Wherever these influences are 
numerous and powerful enough to be the most prominent, the 
negro yields to them with marvellous rapidit}''. 

There is, perliaps, no race that gives up so readily and fully 
old habits and associations. We And no granite formations of 
character underlying the race, such as are met with in the 
tribes and peoples of Asia. Compare, for instance, the plastic 
mobility of the Pangwee and Bakwain with the rigidity of 
the Hindoo or Chinese. Or where the case may be seen in even 
a more striking way, compare the African negro with the Ame- 
rican Indian ; take the one from his tropical wilds, the other 
from his forest home, and place them both under the same 
civilizing influences, and where at the end of a fixed period 
will you find them ? In a single generation the one is nearly 
at your side, the other is simply a savage still. 

The rapid rise of the negro race in the West India Islands, 
Jamaica, for example, when made free by the British Govern- 
ment, is a very striking illustration, though the time has been 
too short to bring it out to the full. Taking all the facts as 
they are given us, we find the people rising almost at once, (for 
thirty 3^ear8 are usually as nothing in the life of a people,) out 
of the barbarism of slavery, into a nation self-supporting, self- 
o-overnins: to a considerable extent, moral and religious, not, 
indeed in the highest degree, but still wonderfully advanced.* 
We believe that it is without a parallel. 

* See Sewell's " West Indies, or the Ordeal of Free Labor in the British West 
India Islands," an evidently dispassionate and disinterested view of the condi- 
tion of these islands. An attentive consideration of his statements would go far 
to relieve the matter of emancipation of some of the ditficulties with which to 
many it seems environed. " These people," he remarks, " who live comforta- 
bly and independently, own houses and stock, pay taxes and poll votes, and 



24 FUTURE OF THE 

Together witli tliis plastic docility, the African has another 
which at first sight seems in flagrant contradiction ; — the race 
has a peculiar power of resistance and pernuinence. It is 
said, probably Irnthfully, that no race has ever been able to 
abide a close contact with the Anglo-Saxon. One of two re- 
sults has always followed ;■ — either it has been swallowed up 
and lost as a river in an ocean, or it has gone down and been 
swept away. But this race has neither been absorbed nor 
destroyed. It has grown under the most adverse influences, 
and asserts itself in all its peculiar characteristics under foreign 
skies, and after the lapse of two centuries the negro of 
America is a true African still. 
. / This race has not greatly mingled with other races. It is, 
we are inclined to believe, rather a characteristic of it, not to 
seek an amalgamation with another people, its tendency is to 
remain apart. We are well aware, indeed, that this is exactly 
contrary to the views of many who have built their opinions 
on popular assertions and prejudice rather than on observed 
facts. The assumption is that the negro desires to mingle his 
blood with that of the white races. The reverse is the fact. 
There is, though it may seem to some unaccountable, a certain 
pride of race, which leads the negro to exult in the purity of 
In's blood, and to regard a foreign element in it as not only not 
desirable, but even objectionable. This feelinor does not belone- 

, *^ Oft 

simply to the negro on his own continent ; it perpetuates, per- 
haps magnifies itself when surrounded by another people. 
Among them in this country a pure-blooded negro Avill, with 
biting sarcasm, taunt the mulatto with the fact that the blood 
of another race is in his veins. 

This feeling, which must have been noticed by any one M'hose 
observation has been extensive or intelligent enough to collect 
the facts, leads the race to remain by itself; and when left to 
its natural course, such is the result. The statistics of this 
country show that the free black does not and camiot mingle 
with the white race. No elevation or freedom can produce 
such an intermixture. Here and there, but so seldom as to 



pay their money to build churches, arc the same people whom wo have heard 
represented as idle, worthless fellows, obstinately opposed to work, aud ready 
to live on an orange or banana, rather than earn their daily bread." 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 25 

present but perhaps a single case only in widelj-separated com- 
munities, there is an inter-marriage. This seeming want of in- 
clination, coupled with a natural and insuperable repugnance 
on the part of the white, must ever keep the two races apart 
when they stand on an equal footing of freedom. 

The often repeated argument against emancipation, founded 
on the notion that it would be necessarily followed by amalga- 
mation, is the product of the grossest ignorance and thought- 
lessness, while at the same time it betrays a shameful want of 
confidence in the white race itself. It surely argues no great 
power or stability in a people when they are not able to keep 
themselves from being mixed up with a confessedly inferior race. 
But facts point in a wholly different direction : so far from free- 
dom promoting this intermixture, the only condition in which 
these two races are found mingling is where the negro is in a 
state of servitude. Here the process goes on freely and under 
the working of natural causes. The influences which on either 
side underothercircumstances make it impossible, here becomes 
inoperative, and are overborne by other and more powerful 
ones. The close intimacies, beginning with infancy and ex- 
tending over the whole life, destroying what under other cir- 
cumstances might seem to be a natural separation ; a servile 
desire to please on the part of the slave, lust and cupidity on 
the part of the master, all combine to make the blood of the 
two races flow in the same veins. Slavery is the source of 
amalgamation. The mulatto and the quadroon tell you un- 
erringly of a present or a former servitude. 

With this pliant ductility and this permanence of race, there 
is another striking characteristic ; — the negro's attachment to 
place. It is probably a natural trait, but from easily perceived 
causes it is perhaps intensified in the case of the American ne- 
gro. He loves his home and seldom goes willingly away from 
it, whether slave or free. The number of fugitives from bond- 
age would be prodigiously multiplied were this feeling more 
easily overcome. Many a poor bondman has turned back to 
slavery when the hard alternative has been forced upon him to 
remain in it or go forever away from the familiar and dear 
scenes of his childhood's home. It is a necessity scarcely less 
powerful than death that compels him to leave them behind. 



l^ 



26 FUTURE OF THE 

The efforts wliich pliilantliropy has made to promote their 
colonization have met M'ith an insuperable obstacle here, and 
will be compelled to contend, more or less imsnccessfully with 
it, till there shall be strength and education enough given the 
black to rise above it. 

Among the many objections which have been urged against 
emancipation, this has been a veiy common one, and has had 
great force in the popular mind ; — it will flood the Northern 
States with free blacks. Tlio objection is vulgar and thoughtless. 
If the simple economic law of supply and demand, as powerful 
over men as material, were not sufficient to keep this people 
where they are needed, and to prevent them from going where 
they are not, the love of home would be strong enough to bar 
such a result. The slave needs all the mighty stimulus of a 
prospective deliverance from slavery to induce him to leave 
the place of his birth, and that even is often not enough ; why, 
then, when he has that boon in his hand, and walks the old 
haunts a freeman, with work requited and enough, why should 
he now go away to strangers and a strange land ? No, the 
States which have meanly and disgracefully passed their laws 
excluding the freed black from a home within their borders, 
might have spared themselves tlie dishonor. The dreaded 
calamity M'ould never have occurred. The enactments were 
the assumption of a gratuitous inftimy. 

The effect of emancipation will be the reverse of this fear. 
Instead of the freed slaves flocking northward, the free blacks 
of the North will gradually go South; in place of Northern 
States being overrun with the one, they will, in process of 
time, be stripped of the other. With slavery out of the way, 
the black will naturally bend his steps to the region where cli- 
mate, congenial employments, habits, associations, all welcome 
him ; he will go away from a people who do not understand 
him, and whose prejudices keep him down, to be near a peo- 
ple who have grown up with him, who know him, and are 
better able to do him good. This consolidation of the race in 
one part of the land will have an important bearing on its 
future. Emancipation onl}' will fully accomplish it. 

Passing these characteristics, common to the race both in 
Africa and in this country, let us consider others, which liave 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 27 

been superadded bv the residence of the negro in America. 
These are marked and important. The residence of the Jew- 
ish people for some two hundred years in Egypt, had a con- 
trolling influence over the whole national character and des- 
tiny. The Hebrew would never have been the man he was, 
nor would he have had the after history had he not known the 
bondage in the land of the Pharaohs. So, we think, the ne- 
gro will, in all the coming time, be a man essentially different 
because of these two hundred years of slavery in America." 
ISTor will it be a temporary or limited effect; it will probably 
mould all the history of the race on its native continent. Africa 
will in future times look back upon slavery in America much 
in the same way that the Jew did upon his Egyptian bondage, 
and will be able to trace the wonder-working power of Divine 
Providence in the results which have floAved from it. 

Strangely enough, one of the marked effects of the residence 
of the black in this country has been to give a new and foreign 
element to the mental and physical structure of the negro. 
It has created an admixture of blood with a superior race. 
The natural effect of slavery has been to infuse the best blood 
of the master in the veins of the slave. This fact has not, 
perhaps, received the attention which it deserves as having an 
influence upon the future of the negro race. We do not speak 
of it in the way of sarcasm or reproach, but as something 
which, while it cannot be concealed or denied, ought not to be 
overlooked. It cannot be when the coming history of this 
people is under consideration. 

The intermingling of race has been extensive; so much so, 
• that in many places the pure-blooded negro is in the minority 
of the whole colored population. Here is not the place to 
make any extended observations on the intellectual and phy- 
siological effects of the union of different races in the same 



* There are some curious analogies between the bondage iu Egypt and slavery 
in America. It seems as if slavery were about to come to an end in this country 
after almost identically the same period of existence. As far as the best cal- 
culations can fix the time, the bondage in Egypt lasted something more than 
two hundred years, and it is about that tmie since the first cargo of African slaves 
were landed by the Dutch at Jamestown, iu 1620. The Hebrews went out suddenly 
and unexpectedly, under the pressure of treme d ns judgments. Will it be so in 
America ? 



28 FUTUEE OF THE 

people, to elevate and give them tone and character. The 
facts are very familiar. We can see that in the case before 
ns tliese effects will be of the same general character. 

In the new social order wliich will come into being on the 
abolition of slavery, this intermixture of race will be less and 
less frequent, but what has already taken place will tend 
greatly to hasten the elevation and advancement of the black. 
The energy, the iire, and activity, the ingenuity and perse- 
verance of the Anglo-Saxon, joined to the plastic docility of 
the African, is a strange combination, yet one which may be 
seen every day, and which wlien made free and permitted to 
exert its unrestrained power,, will be of unmeasured value. 
The mulatto makes a very bad slave, Anglo-Saxon blood being 
never intended to run in the veins of a voluntary bondman, 
but will be a noble freedman. 

It need not be a perpetuated intermingling of race. It will 
not be when slavery has gone, and it is well. Physically the 
mulattoes are a feeble people, and destined usually to an early 
death ; nor are they prolific. By the force of merely natural 
causes, in process of time, they will almost wholly disappear. 
The immobility of the race will assert itself. But in the mean- 
while they will have done their work in assisting the rise of 
their brethren. It is a force imparted for a special occasion, 
strangely given, but not in vain. It is a spoil taken from the 
enemy, one of the marvellous instances in which human pas- 
sions and crime go to help human progress ; it is the blood of 
the master given to make by-and-by a speedier elevation and 
a more perfect manhood for the slave. 

Together with this transfusion of lineage in a part of the co- 
lored population, the actual contact of the whole with the white 
race is another fact which nnist be attentively regarded. This 
otherwise isolated people, isolated not only by continental se- 
paration, but by color from the rest of the human familj^, have 
been brought into the closest possible relationship with one of 
the foremost people of the world. They have been introduced 
into families, making part of the household ; have, to a certain 
extent, been brought under the influences of the civilization 
and enlightenment of this white race. Upon such a susceptible 
people, receiving impressioftS-su-©asily, and being moulded so 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 29 

completely by them, this association cannot but have an nn- 
measured influence, hastening their elevation whenever the 
time of freedom comes. 

In a state of slavery, while these influences are exerted and 
their power is given, yet it must be more or less a latent power. 
Slavery gives no opportunity tor its exhibition. It is like 
throwing electric sparks into the Leyden jar ; it might seem that 
as they flash and disappear, that all the powerislost, but when- 
the proper conditions are fulfilled the unseen force, slowly 
gathered, puts itself forth with prodigious energy. When the 
impulse and opportunity is given by freedom to the American 
negro for advancement, the probabilities are that an example 
of rapid elevation wilj be given by them such as the world has 
never seen. The elements which have been working in and 
around them are such as have never been combined in any 
people before. The facts are, when thoughtfully considered, 
not only peculiar but wonderful. Here is an imitative and 
plastic people dwelling in the most intimate associations with 
an enlightened, energetic race, surrounded by the light of civi- 
lization, learning, art, science ; it is simply impossible that 
they shall not partake in some degree of these great benefits. 
Tliey may be seemingly excluded from them all, but a subtile 
power is the while going forth and is silently laying itself 
up in store, by-and-by to appear in their sudden development. 

But beyond and above all, the negro race in America is a 
Christian race. Here are four millions of Christians. We 
mean, of course, Cliristian in contradistinction from any other 
form of religious belief. Before this one fact we may stand in 
silent wonder and admiration at the processes of God's great 
providence. If anywhere on earth the night of heathenism 
is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it is in the negro's na- 
tive home. Yet here are millions of the same race main- 
taining their peculiar characteristics with great distinctness, 
yet in all essential points a Christian people, infinitely above 
their brethren in their original seat. The contrast in this re- 
gard between the race here and there, is simply immeasurable. 
They have been taken out of the blackness of idolatry, and 
nurtured for two centuries in the light of an advanced Chris- 
tianity, so that heathenism has passed almost out of their tra- 



30 FUTURE OF THE 

ditions. All this great result has beeno ceasioncd bj slavery, 
sprung from cupidity and the origin of unnumbered crime's! 
Perhaps human history presents nowhere a more striking ex- 
ample of God's power to make the wickedness of man brino- 
honor to his naine. 

Here, then, are a Christian peo])lc, with very much of super- 
stition, with very much of ignorance, with, you may say, a low 
type of piety, but yet, after all a Christian ])eople. They arc 
more, a Protestant people. Romanism has never obtained any 
extensive hold on them liere."'^ May we not say that in this, 
that these four millions of blacks are a Protestant Christian 
people, there is an element of unbounded promise ? 

If we throw together these characteristics and facts in regard 
to the negro race which we have now ]K)inted out, we have 
this: — Here is a nation with good mental endowments, pecu- 
liaily distinct and seemingly destined to remain so, yet docile 
and ready to receive the impression of all influences surround- 
ing them, brought not only in closest contact with one of the 
lirst races of the world, but actually receiving a transfusion of 
its best blood, made at least in part partakers of a very high 
civilization, and already Christianized in a form where there is 



Oy> V *It is very striking aud significant in this connection that Romanism has 

^ never made any progress or met with any permanent success in Africa. In 

the North where Mahommedanism prevails, (see Barth,) it is repudiated on 
account of its supposed proclivity to polytheism, and in other parts of the con- 
tinent ditferent causes have prevented its taking root. Indeed, West Africa 
presents the mosi striking instance on record of the utter failure of the Romish 
religion to benefit a heathen people. For more than two centuries the Portu- 
guese had a kingdom in Congo, and for a time it was poweiful and exteusivo 
in its influence. .With it the Papacy sought an establishment. "It was a 
work," says Wilson, {BlUintheca Sacra, Jan. 1852,) "at which successive 
missionaries labored with untiring assiduity for two centuries. Among these 
were some of the most learned men that Rome ever sent forth To the 
Pagan world. It was a cause that ever lay near the heart of the kings of Por- 
tugal, when that nation was at its climax of power and wealth. Yet before 
the close of the eighteenth century, indeed, for any thing we know to the con- 
trary, before the middle of it, not only all their former civilization, but almost 
every trace of Christianity had disappeared from the land, and the whole coun- 
try had fallen back into the deepest ignorance and heathenism, and into greater 
weakness and poverty than had ever been experienced even before its discovery." 
With a continent wonderfully kept from Romanism there, and a people preserved 
from it here, may we no*, see a divine adaptation for the future, a finger-pointing to 
some signal good for the church and the world? 



COLOEED RACE IN AMERICA. 31 

tlie least plaj of superstition or error. Is it difficult to predict 
the future of such a people ? Is it certainly absurd to say that 
•there is a history before it, if not of the highest style, yet one 
good and even excellent ; if not the noblest, as aggressive in 
its good upon the world, yet one sufficiently glorious for itself? 

Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this people, we 
think that we ai'e justified when we say, looking over the facts 
in the case, that when they have removed from them the in- 
cubus of slavery, and start forth on a career of freedom, that 
their rise will be extremely rapid. Indeed, taking all the 
elements of progress which they possess into consideration, it 
is simply impossible that it should be otherwise. 

While we give expression to these thoughts, let us not be 
understood as affirming that the benefits of which we speak are 
the legitimate results of slavery. Nothing could^be farther 
from oar intention. To substitute a cause for an occasion is 
a very common error : indeed some minds seem incapable of 
fully apprehending the world-wide difi'erence. The legitimate 
effect of slavery is to thrust the victim as far down in the scale 
of being as is possible. The nearer the hrute, the letter the 
slave, is the true law of slavery. Slavery is the cause of igno- 
rance, degradation, and crime. It, by a dreadful necessity, 
strips the slave of every attribute of manhood ; neither soul 
nor body is his own ; the one is kept in darkness as the other 
is sold in the shambles. What can a system that locks up all 
human knowledge, stalks through the soul trampling down all 
that constitutes the man, not accidentally, but by the necessity 
of its existence, what can such a system do for its victim ? 

There may be btjnefits such as we are now speaking of, 
coming to the slave in his slavery, but slavery does not give 
them. The laws which create slavery would shut out every 
thing, but they cannot. In spite of them all, the good will 
come. So it has been with the colored race in this country. 
This good can only be made to appear in a state of freedom. 

Just here there is forced upon us another thought of tre- 
mendous significance. This gradual unseen, but mighty ga- 
thering of power in the slave in this land cannot be forever 
without one day coming into form. You cannot be evermore 
throwing electricity into the jar; by-and-by its overcharged 



32" FUTURE OP THE 

contents M'ill bnrst out in sudden exidosion. While yon may 
let the conductor take thcni safely and usefull}' away ! No 
one cares to follow in inuig-ination where the thought leads him. 
Emancipation must be given sooner or later, or all goes down 
in a hideous ruin ; and no experience can calculate nicely when 
the last moment of safety is reached. It may come, and the 
crashing thunderbolt tell that it has gone. 

Of the way in which this freedom is to be brought about, it 
is not the intention of this article to speak. To this M'riter, 
there seems perhaps no problem which approaches it in diffi- 
culty. Emancipation — it is easy to talk and declaim about, it 
is easy to prov^e right and to show desirable, but how to bring 
about, that is the labor. He is a rash man, who speaks very 
confidently on this matter. That it should be brought about, 
that the well-being of the two races, the interests of two conti- 
nents, and humanity itself, the very existence of this Ameri- 
can people demand it, no thiidving man ought to doubt. It 
becomes this nation to address itself to this w'ork, and see that 
it is done and done well. 

While, however, we stand aghast at the difficulties of the 
work, it is comforting to know that the solution is not commit- 
ted to us, but that the providence of God is pushing it forward. 
Events crowding upon each other with a rapidity which bewil- 
ders us, seem steadily and swiftly bringing the freedom of the 
negro to its accomplishment. No man is competent to say 
what the issue will be, or to what new form the events will 
shape themselves. A little while ago the almost common con- 
sent of men looked toward a gradual enuancipation, to-day it 
seems more and more as if the fetters were to be stricken off 
at a blow. How, or when, who shall say ? 

In whatever way it is done, one thing we may expect — it 
will not be by the premeditated devices of men. The great 
works of God arc not done in that way. Smaller and compa- 
ratively unimportant ones may be, but those which affect grand 
interests, and shape the history of the world, the Great Jeho- 
vah takes into His own hand and brings them to pass so mar- 
vellously that all men shall recognize His power and " Know 
His name," (Isa. lii., G.) "Therefore they shall know in that 
day that I am He that doth speak ; behold it is I !" In the 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 33 

ineanwliile it becomes all men reverently and obediently to be 
watching the movements of His Providence, to keep abreast of 
them, and boldly to take each new step as it is indicated, and 
as soon as it is. The end may come sooner, as it will probably 
be vastly easier in its coming than we have dared to hope. 

Taking the fact of emancipation as fixed, and to be realized, 
and that there will here be a race of freedmen rapidly rising in 
civilization and enlightenment, we are confronted with the ques- 
tion — Is this country to l>e the ultimate home cf this people ? We 
answer, No. We do not belie\'e that this people were brought 
here that they might have a permanent residence. They were 
brought to this land for tutelage and trial. The Hebrew bond- 
age is the example illustrating it. Whatever may be said in 
respect to the right of the negro to a perpetual home here, and 
we would be the last to dispute it ; whatever may be urged 
against the prejudice which thrusts them out of association 
and into painful separation, and w^e w^ould not for an instant 
justify it ; yet still we are of the opinion that here the negro 
will not abide as a people. Social equality and the enjoyment 
of every right are well nigh hopeless for him. Were there 
nothing else in the way, the stigma of slavery is almost per- 
petual and ineradicable. 

He is here, not for America, but for Africa. He is here for 
a training that could not have been gotten there. When it is 
complete, he will go back and make the continent wdiat it could 
never be without him. When, under the influences which 
have shaped his character and built him up, he has become a 
self reliant, advanced Christian man, and he is ready and able 
to do something for his race, he will go back to do it. 

Then w^ill be Africa's time. Exploration, advancing com- 
merce, and with it Christianity, will have prepared the way, 
as we see it now being made ready, and the negro race of this 
land wnll go back gradually but with increasing rapidity, and 
by a natural and healthy emigration. Such emigration only 
could be permanently and extensively beneficial to a new land. 
The colonist must more or less be impelled by the native force 
of his own character to seek the new home. Africa must look 
for her Christianity and her civilization especially to her own 
sons. Like all other lands which are to be elevated, the power 
3 



"3^ FUTURE OF the; 

raising her must coine from without. It seems to 1)0 the course 
of Divine Providence tliat new and lieathen countries are to 
1)0 civili/ed and Christianized by Christian colonization ; not 
coniniercial, but Christian coh.Miies must go out to them. The 
colonists must not suppLant and destroy the aboriginal inhabi- 
tants, nor must they come simply as teachers, but they must 
abide as those whose home is to be there, who as residents 
"bring with them the arts and practices of civilized and Chris- 
tian life, and whose extended and continued example illus- 
trates the power and benefits of the life they bring. 

This has been for the most part the course of events. No 
people rises alone and unaided from a state of barbarism. The 
carl}^ Iiistory of luitions which liave a history, usually begins 
with the coming of a colony, whether it be Phainician, Cad- 
mean, or Trojan. "Pteligion, law and letters are not indige- 
nous, but exotic ; in all the past career of man upon the globe 
•one race hands the torch of science to anothei-." Of no people 
must this be more true than of the African. If Africa is to 
be elevated, it must be by the infusion of life and power from 
■without, and by means of colonies whicli bring with them the 
^elements of life and power. 

The colonist who brings this boQn to Africa must be an Af- 
rican. Every year and every experiment renders this more 
clearly evident. The white missionary has done, and is doing, 
a noble, perhaps indispensable work, but the permanent results 
whicli are to be found over extensive regions must come from 
men whose race is similar (o the people among Avhom they 
dwell, and with whom it can mingle freely and advantageously. 
Such a race has been preparing, and will be prepared by tlie 
overruling ])ower of God in this country. 

At present the work of preparation is not com[)letc. A few 
luive been made partially ready, some fit for the work have 
gone and, by their success on the west coast of Africa, have 
shown what the people are capable of doing. A beginning 
lias been made, but in the coming time it mast have a new 
starting-point. The Liberian colony, or any other which shall 
be formed, must rise from the position of a tar distant place to 
which one is banished, to be the atti-active spot which calls, 
and to which a manly energy and independence 'iTrgesT'"'' ^ 



COLORED RACE IN AMERICA. 35 

To send only the degraded and tlie low in intolloct is not 
the method to elevate and ennoble a new land. The stream 
will not rise higher than the fountain, and a slave, though 
free, cannot at once be a truly self-reliant man, least of all can 
he be a good teacher of self-reliance and progress. He must 
iirst teach himself, well as he may, before he can do much for 
■Others. The colonist must, if he carry good with him, be first 
<ilevated himself. 

jSTor, on the other hand, can the isolated and exceptional 
cases of advancement and cultivation be spared from their 
brethren here. For the most part, as can easily be seen would 
naturally be the case, the colonists who have hitherto gone 
have been the most energetic and intelligent. But in the 
thne to come such cannot all be spared : their example and 
aid are needed here to help the general rise. But if tlie time 
comes, and when it comes, that under tlio stimulus of freedom 
the colored race as a whole advances to the point which we 
think there is for it in the future, individuals will not be of ac- 
count ; emigration passing along the track of commerce, and 
commerce by its own great laws will set toward Africa, and 
in this way the problem of African colonization, and of Afri- 
can history in America will be fulfilled. All this may be 
very distant, many years may go by, though fewer than per- 
haps wo may imagine, but the Great God who guides the 
liours and their burden can bring it all about, and through 
one of the deepest crimes of history, the Rebellion of to-day, 
hasten it in its coming. It will be like Him to make crime its 
own avenger, and both crime and vengeance illustrate his 
goodness and love. 



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